How do you photograph and “light paint” a 350-foot long dragon serpent? Some problems also had to be solved. I’ll reveal all the secrets behind the scenes and how I captured this huge dragon under the stars.
Agreed, a lot is happening in this photo. You have the giant dragon serpent. You have long stripes showing the movement of the star across the sky. And somehow, the dragon itself is so shining that it can show off all the incredible scale and detail – without looking gaudy. So, how did I accomplish it?
What on earth is ‘light painting’?
“Light painting” is often used to add light to a night photo. But technically, this means using a handheld light source to “paint” during a long exposure. Your flashlight is the brush, the scene is your canvas, and you decide what will be lit and what will remain in shadow. Night photographers have been using it for decades.
Why do I love handheld light painting? Because it’s fast, flexible, creative, and ridiculously fun. No light stands needed, no heavy gear—it’s just you and your lights shaping the scene.
how to burn a dragon
Photographing such a large statue takes more than just pointing a camera. I’ll tell you the exact steps I took (and why my first attempt two years ago was a complete flop).
Step 1: Choosing the Right Lens
Most night shooters default to wide angles like 14mm or 15mm. They are great for showing the sky. But here, a wide lens would mean getting uncomfortably close to the dragon’s head – distorting the perspective and making the long body look short.
Instead, I went with my “walkabout” lens: the Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR (No longer available). No, it is not the fastest glass. But since I was shooting at f/8 anyway (thanks to the almost full moon illuminating the desert), it didn’t matter.
The longer focal length also compresses the scene, capturing not only the dragon’s body but also the mountains and stars behind it. Bonus: It makes star trails appear longer and sharper. I say yes!
Step 2: Gain a Vantage Point?
Lens choice alone won’t save you. Placement matters. I needed a view that showed the full 350-foot length of the dragon. Setting the dragon to the right did the trick – it gave me a full body and a sky full of negative space, space the dragon could “see”, which was perfect for those star trails.
I backed up, zoomed in to 40mm and smiled. It felt right. The body was in full view until the end of the tail. This seemed like a great creation.
Step 3: “The face is too dark!”
I could see there was already an issue to resolve. From the vantage point I had chosen, the head of the dragon serpent was black. This was because the moon was shining from the right side. No light was falling on the left side of the head.
I decided to burn the head from the left side. I don’t do this often, as I prefer my light painting to mainly come from the same side of the moon so it looks more natural. But I really wanted to light the face, because I was fascinated by the detail and I thought it was important because the face was such a prominent part of the composition.
When I finally started the sequence of photos, I went to the left, covered my light with my body so it wouldn’t be visible in the photo if I was in the frame, and skimmed my light to the left.
How do you walk 350 feet down a dragon’s body with light painting it – without getting in the photo or destroying the lens with your flashlight? After thinking for a while, I arrived at two techniques.
Trick 1: Stay in motion
Night photographers have a secret superpower: invisibility. As long as you keep moving during the long exposure, you won’t be registered in the frame. Stand still for too long (10% or more of the total exposure), and you start to look like a ghost in the photo. So I just kept going, going, going…
Trick 2: Protect your lights
To avoid glare in the lens, I placed the light (A) ProtoMachines LED2 I had just bought) in my right hand, shielding it from the camera with my torso. As I went, I moved the beam up and down to evenly color the scales. problem solved.
Step 5: How to Create Epic Star Trails
The lighting was the tricky part. Star trails? It’s surprisingly simple. All you need is a good base exposure and an intervalometer to shoot continuously without lag.
My settings: 2 minutes at f/6.3, ISO 200 with a Nikon D610 DSLR. Each display gave me plenty of time to walk the length of the dragon and add lighting. I shot 14 consecutive frames – 28 minutes in total. Then I stacked them in Photoshop for that sweeping star-trail effect.
Bonus: If you want the exact step-by-step stacking method, I break it down in another Fstoppers article using this same photo!,
Learn from my mistake!
I first photographed this dragon serpent in 2013. I used pretty much the same perspective. It looked amazing behind the camera. But when I got home and looked at it on my computer, it was grainy, low-resolution, and basically unusable. I was devastated. What happened?
Turns out, I brought my camera in for cleaning, and they quietly reset everything to factory defaults. Without realizing it, I had spent the entire evening shooting on the Nikon D90 (a massive 12.1 MP!) using the “Normal JPG” setting instead of RAW.
Good news? I went back two years later in 2015 and recreated the photo you see in this article. Lesson learned: Always double-check your settings before shooting something epic.
About This Giant Dragon Serpent Statue
This Dragon Serpent is not an AI creation. It actually exists. It is a 350-foot-tall metal sculpture in Borrego Springs, California, created by sculptor Ricardo Breceda. The snake appears to dive in and out of the sand and even passes under the road. This is one of the most surreal places you can photograph at night.
we bring Our night photography workshop students here, as well as in Joshua Tree National ParkI love the looks on the participants’ faces when they see this dragon for the first time. And I love it even more when I look at my photos of the Dragon Serpent under the stars and see their faces light up.
